Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and externally - to disclose environmentally relevant information (see,
for instance, Udall, 1998 ,onthe changing World Bank policies in this
respect). According to a World Resource Institute Report (Petkova
et al., 2002 ), three main forces have triggered the growing worldwide
demand for public access to environmental information: (i) the urgency
and scope of environmental problems, which called for wide support
and thus information sharing; (ii) the increase in activism in civil soci-
ety, also outside the OECD countries; and (iii) the developments and
spreading in information technology and communication means.
Although in most OECD countries access to environmental infor-
mation has been institutionally safeguarded, the debate has not lost its
urgency, for two reasons. First, many of the non-OECD countries have
still not installed legal provisions and institutionalised practices for
freedom of information and information disclosure, although changes
in this regard can be noticed. Towards the end of the 1990s, these ideas
of right-to-know and information disclosure began to spread beyond
the OECD countries, towards industrialising countries in, among oth-
ers, Southeast and East Asia (see Chapter 10 ). In addition, a number
of international organisations and initiatives actively promote manda-
tory information disclosure and environmental reporting by private
companies. 4 Second, the implementation of access to environmental
information and the actual easy access of civil society to environmen-
tal information still seriously lags behind the legal codification. In a
study on access to environmental information in a representative sam-
ple of nine countries, 5 it was found that the legal provisions and state
of the environment reports were mostly in place, as well as the quality
and accessibility of information on highly visible emergencies and air
quality. But access to information on for instance water quality, indus-
trial facility emissions and risks, and accidents at private facilities was
generally poor (Petkova et al., 2002 ).
4
For example, the 1992 CERES Principles of the Coalition of Environmentally
Responsible Economies; the 1993 PERI guidelines of the Public Environmental
Reporting Initiative; the various guidelines for reporting of the International
Standard Organisation; the 1999 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines by the
Global Reporting Initiative; the EU directive 2003/4/EC on public access to
information. Other privately supported and initiated guidelines and initiatives
are Goldman Sachs Best Practices; Malcolm Baldrige National Quality; Social
Accountability 8000; The Business Council for Sustainable Development
Corporate Government Principles; Global Sullivan Principles; and AA1000.
5
Chile, Hungary, South Africa, Uganda, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand
and the United States.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search